How to Add the NBA Schedule to Your Calendar (Google, Apple, Outlook)

Where to get the feed

Option 1: the official team schedule sync (recommended)

Every team's schedule page on nba.com/[team]/schedule offers a calendar sync — look for "Sync schedule", "Add to calendar" or a small calendar icon above the game list. It lets you pick Google Calendar, Apple/iCal or Outlook and creates a live subscription that updates when tip-off times change for national TV.

The same option sits in the official NBA app and in most team apps under the schedule tab.

Option 2: ESPN's team pages

ESPN's team schedule pages (espn.com/nba/team/schedule/_/name/[abbr], for example lal for the Lakers) also expose an iCal link near the bottom of the schedule. It is handy if you already use ESPN feeds for other leagues.

Whole league in one calendar?

There is no official all-30-teams feed, and you would not want one: 1,230 regular-season games would bury everything else in your calendar. Subscribe to two or three teams and add the national-TV windows below as recurring placeholders instead.

Add it to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook

Once you have the schedule link (it usually starts with webcal:// or ends in .ics; a league's "sync" button hands it to your app for you), the steps are the same for every sport:

Google Calendar

1. Open calendar.google.com on a desktop browser (the mobile app can't add subscriptions).
2. In the left sidebar, next to Other calendars, click + → From URL.
3. Paste the link, then click Add calendar. It appears under Other calendars and syncs to your phone automatically.
4. Optional: click the three dots next to the calendar to give it a color, or untick it when you need a quiet week.

Apple Calendar (iPhone, iPad, Mac)

1. iPhone / iPad: Settings → Apps → Calendar → Calendar Accounts → Add Account → Other → Add Subscribed Calendar, paste the link, tap Next, then Save.
2. Mac: in Calendar choose File → New Calendar Subscription, paste the link, click Subscribe. Set Auto-refresh to Every day (or Every hour during the playoffs) and tick iCloud so it reaches all your devices.

Outlook

1. Outlook on the web / new Outlook: Calendar → Add calendar → Subscribe from web, paste the link, name it, click Import.
2. Classic Outlook desktop: File → Account Settings → Internet Calendars → New, paste the link. If game times look a few hours off, the desktop app ignored the feed's time zone; the web version doesn't have this problem.

Key dates

Season structure

The NBA regular season runs from late October to mid-April with each of the 30 teams playing 82 games — roughly 3.5 games a week, with plenty of back-to-backs and five-games-in-seven-nights stretches. Unlike the NFL, almost nothing is fixed to a weekday: your team can play any night, which is exactly why a live feed beats a printed schedule.

Sixteen teams reach the playoffs: the top six in each conference qualify directly, seeds 7–10 go through the Play-In Tournament. All four playoff rounds are best-of-seven, ending in the Finals in June.

The NBA Cup (the in-season tournament) is played inside the regular season: group games in November count in the standings; the knockout rounds in December add one to three extra games for the eight qualifying teams.

Tip-off windows worth pre-blocking

NBA start times are far less regular than NFL kickoffs, but the national broadcast windows are stable enough to block before the schedule drops:

• National TV doubleheaders — 7:30 PM ET and 10:00 PM ET (ESPN, ABC, NBC/Peacock and Amazon Prime share the package from 2025–26 onward)
• Local games — mostly 7:00 or 7:30 PM local time; West-coast home games start 10:00–10:30 PM Eastern
• Christmas Day — five games from noon ET until late evening
• MLK Day (January 18, 2027) — an all-day slate starting around 12:30 PM ET
• Sunday afternoons — occasional 1:00 and 3:30 PM ET national games

How the NBA Cup shows up in your feed

Group-stage Cup games are ordinary regular-season games, so they appear in your team's feed from day one (they are usually flagged "NBA Cup" in the title). The knockout games are different: they are only scheduled once the eight qualifiers are known at the end of November, and then appear in the feed a few days before they are played (December 9–16).

Teams that do not reach the knockouts still play two extra regular-season games during that window. Those are also added to the feed in early December — another reason to subscribe rather than import a static file in October.

How to pre-add the Play-In and the playoffs

Series dates depend on seeding and on how long each series lasts, so your team's feed will only contain playoff games a day or two before each one. Add these windows as all-day placeholders now:

• Play-In Tournament — April 14–17, 2027
• First round — from April 18, 2027 (games roughly every other day, up to seven per series)
• Conference semifinals and finals — May 2027
• NBA Finals — Game 1 on June 3, 2027; Game 7, if needed, on June 20

Time zones: why a 7:30 PM game shows as 10:30 PM

Official feeds tag every game with the arena's local time. A Lakers home game at 7:30 PM Pacific is correctly shown as 10:30 PM if you live in New York. Google Calendar and Apple Calendar do this conversion automatically; the classic Outlook desktop app occasionally ignores the feed's time zone and shows the raw local time. If your Outlook events look three hours off, follow the fix in our time-zone guide, which covers Outlook too.